Chapter 21 - 22

"Are you a member of the mafia, a drug dealer, or a serial killer to say you're dangerous?" you ask, the question surging before you can filter it. It seems absurd, even to you, to linger in the cold air between you. The masked man's head slowly rises. Those brown eyes, now clouded with pain, fix on you. For a second, he just stares, and you think he might actually laugh. Instead, he lets out a pained, gasping sound that might be the ghost of a laugh. "Worse," he murmurs, his voice weak. "Government." The word falls with a strange weight. It doesn't make you feel any better. In fact, it makes the pit in your stomach deeper. A government man, bleeding in an alley, wearing a skull mask and telling you to run. That's a whole different category of problems. "Okay," you say softly, accepting it. You don't know what it means and you don't want to. "Government. Fine. But you're still bleeding all over this alley, and you're not going to get very far on your own. You finally reach out, without touching him, but offering your hand, palm up, in the space between you. It's a gesture of truce. Of impotent, stupid goodwill. 'My name is Aekkokus,' you tell him, because it suddenly seems important that he knows you're a person and not just a nuisance. 'My apartment is three blocks away. I have a first-aid kit. And I promise I'm not with... whoever did this.' He looks at your hand, then back at your face. The suspicion in his eyes is a living thing, at war with the obvious, desperate need for help. The silence stretches, filled only by your labored breathing and the distant hum of the city."